Darpan letter · No. 177 October 2026

In due course of time

On a merit list allegedly priced by a candidate’s chance of selection, a disease that keeps moving behind a number declared won, and Kṛṣṇa’s word that knowledge is found within, kālena, in its own time, with Patañjali’s three conditions for practice that holds

प्रिय साथी,

Two stories in today’s magazine are about time, and about what people do when they cannot bear to wait for it. In Karnataka, the Enforcement Directorate has arrested the suspended chairman of the State Public Service Commission and a member in its probe into the recruitment of veterinary officers. It alleges that the controller of examinations leaked questions to about twenty candidates who paid twenty to forty lakh rupees, and that once the merit list appeared, “the higher the candidate’s chance of selection, the higher the amount demanded”. These are allegations, and every accused deserves a fair trial. The other story is quieter. India met the global threshold for eliminating leprosy as a public health problem in 2005, yet this year’s programme report finds transmission halted in only 148 districts against the 300 projected, even after health workers screened more than seventy crore people.

The first story is about people who tried to buy in a month what others were building over years. The second is about honest workers who did the right thing for years and still find the result lagging behind. You will meet both feelings in your own preparation, often in the same week: the wish for a shortcut, and the discouragement of effort that does not yet show. The Gītā speaks to both in two verses of its fourth chapter.

Here is the first: न हि ज्ञानेन सदृशं पवित्रमिह विद्यते। तत्स्वयं योगसंसिद्धः कालेनात्मनि विन्दति॥ — na hi jñānena sadṛśaṃ pavitram iha vidyate, tat svayaṃ yogasaṃsiddhaḥ kālenātmani vindati — “In this world there is nothing as purifying as knowledge. One who is perfected through practice finds it, in due course of time, within oneself” (Bhagavad Gītā 4.38). Look at three words. Svayam: by oneself, not through another. Ātmani: within oneself, not on a list. Kālena: in time, in its own time. Knowledge, in Kṛṣṇa’s account, is the one thing that cannot be transferred, leaked or sold, because it is only ever found inside the person who did the work.

Now bring this to the Commission. A question paper can be leaked. A rank can, it is alleged, be priced. But what the State was trying to buy with that examination, a veterinarian who can save a farmer’s cattle, cannot be bought at all. The candidate who paid forty lakh would have received a post and an empty chair inside himself. Meanwhile, somewhere in Karnataka, an honest candidate who had prepared for years lost the seat, and with it some of his faith that effort counts. That second loss is the deeper crime, because it teaches the next generation that kālena, in its own time, is a fool’s rule. A Public Service Commission exists under Articles 315 to 323 precisely to keep that rule true.

The second verse tells you who receives knowledge: श्रद्धावाँल्लभते ज्ञानं तत्परः संयतेन्द्रियः। ज्ञानं लब्ध्वा परां शान्तिमचिरेणाधिगच्छति॥ — śraddhāvāṁl labhate jñānaṃ tatparaḥ saṃyatendriyaḥ, jñānaṃ labdhvā parāṃ śāntim acireṇādhigacchati — “The one who has faith, who is devoted to it and has mastered the senses, gains knowledge; having gained it, he soon reaches the highest peace” (Bhagavad Gītā 4.39). Notice the order. Faith, devotion and self-control come first; peace comes after knowledge, not after selection. Nothing in the verse promises a rank. It promises that what you build honestly becomes yours, and that this brings a kind of steadiness no result can give or take away.

Patañjali adds the condition that makes this practical. स तु दीर्घकालनैरन्तर्यसत्कारासेवितो दृढभूमिः — sa tu dīrghakāla-nairantarya-satkārāsevito dṛḍhabhūmiḥ — “That practice becomes firmly grounded when it is pursued for a long time, without interruption, and with respect” (Yoga Sūtra 1.14). Three conditions: dīrghakāla, a long time; nairantarya, without breaks; satkāra, with care and respect for the work itself. Now read the leprosy figures again. Single-dose preventive treatment reached over ninety per cent of likely contacts. ASHA workers flagged nearly forty lakh suspected cases. The result still lags, partly because a disease with a long incubation keeps paying out the bill of the years when surveillance was relaxed after 2005. That is what happens when nairantarya breaks: the ground that looked firm was not.

Be fair to the other side, as an examiner will want you to be. Someone may say that “in due course of time” is what every lazy office tells a waiting citizen, and that patience has been preached to the poor too long. That is true, and the Gītā does not excuse it. Kālena describes how understanding grows inside a person who keeps working; it is not a licence for a government to delay a pension or a result. A Commission that takes three years to declare results is not practising patience. Patience is a virtue in the one who builds, never in the one who is supposed to deliver.

Let this make you proud of where you come from. Long before modern psychology wrote about deliberate practice, Patañjali had named its three conditions in a single sūtra, and the Gītā had placed knowledge beyond the reach of purchase. And look at India today: an agency following the money to the top of a constitutional body, a Governor suspending its chairman, health workers walking village to village for a disease most of the country has forgotten. That is a Republic still doing the slow work.

For your preparation. In GS4, today’s Case 1 lets you show that a member’s loyalty is to the honest candidate, and to propose two-key custody of question papers and lists, audit trails and rotation of sensitive posts. In GS2, the KPSC story gives you material on Articles 315 to 323, the Governor’s power under Article 317 and the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024 for central examinations. In GS2 health, the leprosy report lets you argue that a programme must measure transmission, not prevalence. And in an essay on patience, merit or integrity, 4.38 gives you the line that knowledge is the only thing no one can leak.

And now about you. Someone in your group will soon share a “sure-shot” list of questions, a copied set of notes, a coaching shortcut that promises to save a year. Some of it will be harmless and some of it will not. Before you take it, ask one question: will this make the knowledge mine, svayam, within me, or only make me look prepared? And on the evenings when your mock score has not moved for a month, remember the health worker who screened a village and found nothing to show for it that day. The work was still real. Keep the three conditions: long, unbroken, with respect. The ground becomes firm under feet that keep standing on it.

One day you will sit on a selection board, or hold the key to a strongroom, or sign a report that says a disease has been beaten. On that day, someone will offer you a faster way. Remember that what is worth having is found kālenātmani, in time, within. Let your own rank be one that no one could have sold you.

— आपका साथी, दर्पण

Sources: Bhagavad Gītā 4.38 · Bhagavad Gītā 4.39 · Yoga Sūtra 1.14